WordPress® Bible

Chapter 22. Leveraging WordPress MU and Multi-Blog Functionality

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Installing and configuring WordPress MU

• Converting a WordPress blog to WordPress MU

• Understanding WordPress MU plugin nuances

• Adapting to WordPress MU

WordPress Multi-User, or WordPress MU, is the multi-blog variant of WordPress. It is built entirely on the same code base as WordPress but has additional features added to enable it to operate in a multi-blog environment.

Holistically, WordPress MU is a completely different approach to blogging. Whereas WordPress is fairly straight-line blogging — it's meant for individuals who want to have a blog to write or produce content on the Web — WordPress MU is meant for networks or hosting WordPress for other bloggers. To that end, though many of the management options for blogs using WordPress MU are similar to a single WordPress installation, the principles behind security, user management, and blog management are entirely different.

In addition, WordPress MU introduces an entirely new role called the Site Administrator, or Site Admin, who has Admin capabilities across the entire network of WordPress MU blogs. Regular administrators also exist, as they do in WordPress, but like in WordPress, administrators in WordPress MU are only Admins on their individual blogs and do not have global authority across the entire network of WordPress MU blogs.

Note

User roles and capabilities in WordPress are discussed in Chapter 19.

WordPress MU has gained significant appeal because ...